Automate payables processes with the Payables Agent

Enabled for	Public preview	General availability
Users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jul 4, 2025	-

Business value

The Payables Agent in Business Central helps you automate tedious and time-consuming accounts payable (AP) and accountant tasks. It saves time and reduces errors. The agent gets vendor invoice attachments from Microsoft 365 email and creates purchase invoice documents in Business Central for review. The agent uses available purchase history or your company's accounting policies to register purchase invoices. With the Payables Agent, AP professionals, clerks, and accountants can focus on more demanding tasks, which boosts productivity and efficiency.

Feature details

Every company has expenses. Some expenses relate to the supply chain. Others relate to operating costs like rent, utilities, leasing, food, phone bills, and software subscriptions. The Payables Agent focuses on operating costs, which are known as overhead expenses. You often receive these expenses as email attachments or through other channels.

Sourcing files and attachments related to purchase of overhead expenses

In the first version, the Payables Agent sources purchase attachments as PDF files from a Microsoft 365 email account where vendors send their invoices. The agent imports these invoice documents into E-Documents in Business Central for further processing.

Processing imported purchase attachment and files

After you import files, Azure Document Intelligence processes them by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The results are stored in Business Central in the E-Document. An updated PDF attachment viewer lets you validate the OCR processing by viewing the attachment in a near-full screen.

Creating purchase invoices

When Azure Document Intelligence processes a purchase attachment, the Payables Agent creates a purchase invoice document that you can approve and post. The agent uses various predictors and indicators to create these invoices. These predictors and indicators come from the company's available purchase history, accounting policies, and other settings you specify when you set up the agent. The Payables Agent streamlines the entire flow from identifying and importing purchase attachments, capturing relevant information to categorize the expense, registering the expense correctly in the general ledger, and creating purchase documents.

In the future, the Payables Agent handles more complex scenarios and company-defined rules. It manages supply chain expenses and matches them with open purchase orders. The agent also supports e-invoices received through other channels, like PEPPOL and other access points. It supports vendor invoices that vendors push into E-Documents through its native API.

Geographic areas

Visit the Explore Feature Geography report for Microsoft Azure areas where this feature is planned or available.

Language availability

Visit the Explore Feature Language report for information on this feature's availability.

Additional resources

Payables Agent overview (docs)